Not Business as Usual in Russia

Briefly Noted:Human Rights Software

Not Business as Usual in Russia by Mary
McAuley

The remains of a labor camp are slowly erased by the snows
and harsh winters of the Chita region.Fifteen years ago there was no private
business in Russia, let alone any firms specializing in computer technology,
although there were many talented computer specialists working for the
government and in state research institutions. In 1991, however, in the new
post-communist environment, a group of young Siberian specialists in information
technology set up a firm they called Maxsoft. "Business" says Aleksei
Babii, one of the directors, "is only one of our interests. We are
interested in local history, literature, art and much else…Information
technology makes it possible, first, to preserve unique materials and, secondly,
ensure easy access to them." One of their main interests is the political
repression of the Soviet period.

Krasnoyarsk, a city of just under one million,
lies four time zones east of Moscow. It is the capital of a Siberian region that
reaches from the Arctic almost to China, a place of exile and labor camps since
Czarist times. In the Soviet period the camps stretched across the territory. No
one knows how many perished in them. Graveyards in the forests lie uncharted.
Relatives of the victims, and human rights activists, began the search for
information about them in 1988. They formed one of Russia's early Memorial
societies, which aim to document the fate of the repressed, bring them into the
public memory, and help their relatives and survivors. Among Krasnoyarsk
Memorial's members were Aleksei Babii and other key Maxsoft employees. By the
mid-1990's they had compiled a database of 40,000 repressed persons for their
region and created a local Memorial Web site (http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/).

Now
they are providing the technical know-how to establish a more ambitious
electronic database, which will include the millions of victims of political
repression throughout the former Soviet Union. Participants in this project,
"Reclaiming the Names," include human rights activists, archivists,
academics and students from across Russia. Most of them have been compiling and
publishing Books of Memory, listing the repressed for their region. Says Babii:
"For a company which specializes in developing information technology it is
both an honor and important to take part." The primary source of data for
the books and the database is state archives.

Developing relations with the
different ministries and agencies is time-consuming and difficult. Obstacles,
bureaucratic and political, continually crop up. Relatives provide valuable data,
but it all has to be checked. The main problem, in Babii's view, is
methodological. "At every stage we are confronted by incomplete, poorly
structured information," he says. Hence the importance of the electronic
handbooks on all aspects of the system of repression, being compiled by Moscow
specialists, to guide those collecting and registering material. Sovfoto
Barracks in the Panyshevsky Collective Labor Camp in Siberia, part of the vast
Stalinist gulag.

Who will benefit? Babii sees the aim of the site as "alerting
people from the former Soviet Union and outside to the terrible lessons of the
20th century, so that they will not happen again." Of course it will also
be of practical use to relatives, government officials and to future researchers.
According to Babii, "The experience of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial site has
taught us that people are powerfully influenced by reading huge lists of those
who were… 'shot,' 'exiled,' 'deported,' 'dekulakized,' or 'sent to a camp.'"

Has the project brought surprises? In traveling across Eastern Siberia and the
Far East to visit potential participants, Babii was inspired to find, he says,
"how much has been done in so many places to preserve the memory of the
victims of political repression--by people without adequate financial help,
without assistance from and sometimes in the face of obstruction from local
authorities." Now the time has come, he feels, to combine the resources
technology can provide with the enthusiasm and commitment of activists to put
pressure on, at the very least, local authorities. Last month Krasnoyarsk
Memorial and Maxsoft invited representatives of the Regional Administration to a
seminar for partner organizations from Siberia and the Far East. Almost all the
participants presented copies of their Books of Memory. The Krasnoyarsk
Administration had nothing to contribute. A week later the Regional
Administration ordered that a book be compiled and published, something the
local Memorial society has been urging for the past ten years.

The Ford
Foundation's support of Maxsoft is part of a larger effort to strengthen
Russia's human rights community, in particular, activities that are trying to
study past abuses and relate them to the present.